A representação das identidades homossexuais nas telenovelas da Rede Globo: uma leitura dos personagens protagonistas no período da censura militar à televisão

Abstract

This master´s thesis is based on the concepts of cultural identity in contemporaneity in the light of authors linked to Cultural Studies, Symbolic Interactionism and Post-Structuralism. We first focus on identity concepts and after discuss sexual orientation and gender identities. We also observe the soap opera narrative as a form of revealing the nation in a time marked by federal censorship on television. In the constructive process of the narrative we will emphasize the homosexual characters in Rede Globo´s telenovelas, protagonists of stories written under the official control of censorship, but that in a way approached sometimes timidly, sometimes more incisively the homosexuality of main characters of these plots. Our thematic focus is on the homosexual characters of this period, so we have analyzed three telenovelas in accordance with the premises of the Content Analysis by Laurence Bardin. The first telenovela is “O Rebu”, by Bráulio Pedroso, aired in 1974, which presented the story of a party offered by Conrad Mahler to entertain an Italian princess. During the party, the host commits a crime, being a homoaffective relationship one of the reasons of the murder. In this telenovela, Roberta and Glorinha leave their husbands and move together. The second one is “Os Gigantes”, by Lauro César Muniz, aired in 1979, in which Paloma Gurgel, a free woman ahead of her time takes the liberty of relating herself to another woman. The third one is “Brilhante”, by Gilberto Braga, aired in 1981. In this telenovela we follow the predicaments of Inácio, a homosexual who suffers to be accepted by his family. We argue for the importance of telenovelas showing LGBT characters in a period in which censorship repressed society from publicly debating this possibility of citizenship.